Al Jazeera launched its Transparency Unit in January alongside the release of the Palestine Papers
Al Jazeera will relaunch its anonymous drop-box for leaked documents in the coming weeks, after undergoing a technical review to increase the protection of sources.
The Qatar-based broadcaster launched its Transparency Unit in January, the night before its release of almost 1,700 leaked documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
When it was introduced the broadcaster said the new platform would enable the secure submission of content to the broadcaster, including documents, photos, audio and video clips, as well as story tip-offs.
However in the summer of this year its drop-box for submissions was taken down to improve the way it dealt with high volumes of material and to also provide added security for sources.
"After a long technical review by in-house experts we developed a secure drop that's very much a work in progress," head of the unit Clayton Swisher told Journalism.co.uk.
"In the summer we took it down because we thought there wasn't the best available technology being used to protect would-be sources and we wanted to be sure we had the best in trade.
"So we're about to relaunch our anonymous drop, which will allow people to come to use securely to contribute information without having their identities exposed.
"We think that what we have, the product we're about to launch, will be the gold standard in the industry of anonymous drop tools where journalists and contributors can offer us information in a confidential and secure environment and it will be reviewed by the eyes of our journalists here who have established a reputation through the Palestine Papers and subsequent projects at being able to handle with great confidence and security documents that are entrusted to our care."
On Tuesday whistleblowers website WikiLeaks announced that it would temporarily suspend all its publishing activities to "ensure future survival", as founder Julian Assange claimed a financial blockade on the site had "destroyed" 95 per cent of its revenue.
But he said WikiLeaks would launch a "new generation submission system" on November 28, after being closed down in October last year while it dealt with the amount of material it had accumulated.
When WikiLeaks released the Iraq War logs last year Al Jazeera joined a number of other media outlets, in producing reports and analysis of the documents
as part of a collaboration with the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
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